20 Killed In Gaza As Israel Resumes Bombardment

GAZA CITY (Ma’an) — Renewed Israeli attacks on Gaza have killed 20 Palestinians since a temporary ceasefire collapsed on Tuesday, a health ministry spokesman said Wednesday.

Ashraf al-Qidra said that Zaki Suleiman al-Rai, 54, died from wounds sustained early Wednesday.

The bodies of Mustafa Rabah al-Dalou, 14 and Wafaa Hussein al-Dalou were also recovered from the wreckage of the al-Dalou family home in Gaza City.

Earlier, a two-year-old Palestinian girl was killed in Israeli shelling on the al-Zaytoun neighborhood of Gaza City, al-Qidra said.

She was identified as Nour Muhammad Abu Hasirah.

Before that, al-Qidra said an Israeli airstrike killed an unidentified man near the al-Maqusi residential buildings in western Gaza City. The man’s body was taken to Shifa hospital.

Al-Qidra added that civil defense rescue teams had recovered the bodies of a woman and a child from the rubble of the al-Dalou family home in Sheikh Radwan, which was hit by five Israeli missiles.

The wife and daughter of al-Qassam Brigades commander Muhammad Deif were killed in the attack, Hamas says, along with four-year-old Ahmad al-Dalou.

A 24-hour truce due to last until midnight collapsed late Tuesday afternoon when Israel said rockets fired from the Strip hit Beersheba. Hamas denied firing the rockets.

An Israeli army statement said that 117 rockets had been fired at Israel from Gaza since the truce collapsed.

One of them hit a home in Ashkelon without causing injuries, it said.

Earlier, the army said it had struck “some 60 terror sites” in Gaza overnight, in addition to targeting “two terrorists … in the northern Gaza Strip.”

Over 2,000 Palestinians — the vast majority of them civilians — have been killed throughout Israel’s offensive on Gaza.

Sixty-seven people have been killed on the Israeli side, 64 of them soldiers.

Israel: The “Only Democracy In The Middle East” or Just A “Rogue State”?

By Dr. Ludwig Watzal

20 August, 2014Countercurrents.org

Did George W. Bush perhaps forget one state when he delivered his infamous speech about the so-called “Axis of Evil”? The Zionist lobbyists around the world do everything in their power to whitewash and justify the heinous war crimes that have been committed by the Israeli occupying force against a defenseless and imprisoned Palestinian population in the ghetto-like Gaza Strip. Stephen Lendman, journalist and Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization, has listed a lot of arguments supporting the thesis that Benyamin Netanyahu is “Israel’s Pinochet”.[1]

Why don’t dissociate the US Empire and its European client states from such a leader, who discredits all the precious values, these states supposedly ascribe to? Or are these so-called Western values only window dressing or good for soap-box oratory in order to justify their own war crimes? It seems that none of the Western politicians want to understand, in which dilemma they find themselves, if they continue to support the war crimes of Netanyahu’s right-wing nationalistic government. International arrest warrants should have already been issued against Netanyahu and his security cabinet in the name of the Palestinian Authority in order to bring Netanyahu and his colleagues before the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Not without reason have neither the United States nor Israel acceded to the Statute of the International Criminal Court. The leaders of both countries knew why they didn’t join it. Both countries on the other hand, exert massive pressure on the court, so the court keeps the lawsuits against Israeli officials for formal reasons inadmissible, as Julian Borger reports in the British newspaper “The Guardian” from 18 August 2014.[2]

Unfortunately, as long as these reckless politicians are in office, they are granted immunity. But what about Ehud Olmert, Ehud Barak and Tzipi Livni who were responsible for the Gaza massacre in 2008/2009? Why hasn’t the Abbas regime not issued arrest warrants against these Israeli politicians? The Goldstone report is the basis for an indictment for these war crimes, even though Judge Goldstone had to renounce form its own results, due to the pressure of the Zionist lobby in South Africa. But nonetheless the report is still legally valid.

Every politically impartial observer of the political scene in Israel turns away in disgust from the everyday racism and fascism in Israel. Here are some samples: The deputy speaker of the Knesset, Moshe Feiglin, calls for “Concentration Camps” in Gaza and “the conquest of the entire Gaza Strip, and annihilation of all fighting forces and their supporters”.[3] Feiglin is not considered a weirdo but rather a political ticket-puncher within Netanyahu’s Likud party. The newspaper “The Times of Israel” published an article by Jochanan Gordon, in which he argued that “Genocide is permissible”.[4] To their credit, the paper removed the online-article after a public outcry. The author was subsequently dropped from the editorial team like a hot potato and had to publicly apologize. A rabbi and member of the Knesset, Eli Ben Dahan, named Palestinians “animals who do not deserve to live”.[5] The list of racist and extreme right-wing sayings by Israeli politicians could be continued indefinitely. Having read the book “Jewish History, Jewish Religion” by Israel Shahak, I’m not surprised at all.[6]

For the credibility of all the democracies, Israel becomes an unsustainable problem. Political consequences are overdue.